More testing, but Starship’s first orbital flight still hasn’t happened as the end of 2022 approaches
Six months ago, on 8th June 2022, we provided an update on SpaceX’s Starship program. We ended it by reporting that SpaceX’s COO and President Gwynne Shotwell - often considered to be “the adult in the room”, when compared with Elon Musk and his more outlandish predictions - had said, in May, that she expected Starship’s first orbital test flight to take place in June or July.
This hasn’t happened.
The early test flights of Starship came thick and fast, each always preceded by a series of cryogenic tests and static fire tests. It was an exciting time. SN5 hopped 150m in August 2020, followed by SN6 doing the same with slight improvements. On 9th December 2020, SN8 was a resounding success. It launched, reached 10km, manoeuvred to its brand-new-concept belly-flop or skydiver position, went through a controlled descent, successfully flipped to its landing position, but then came down on the landing pad too quickly, exploding.
Starship SN10 (Credit: SpaceX)
The exhilarating test flights of SN9, SN10, and SN11 were similarly successful - and we didn’t have to wait long until SN15, a prototype with “hundreds of design improvements”, completely nailed it. SN15 took off and gently landed back down, remaining upright, on Wednesday 5th May 2021.
A recent full stack of Starship and the Super Heavy booster (Credit: SpaceX)
Since those heady days, when you barely dared to look away for a day or two from keeping up with the mad pace of progress, it’s considerably slowed down. But we are now getting to the business end of testing, involving the need for a Super Heavy booster underneath Starship (but still, collectively, referred to as Starship). This will be the most powerful space rocket ever seen to take off from our planet. And a different, more complex launch pad was needed.
The most notable recent tests were Booster 7 performing a full-duration static fire test of 14 Raptor 2 engines on 14th November 2022 - and then, on 29th November, Booster 7 completing a long-duration static fire test of 11 Raptors. The next forthcoming major landmark will be the static firing of all 33 Raptors of a booster.
SpaceX’s Starship Booster 7 performing a long-duration static fire test of 11 Raptor 2 engines (Credit: SpaceX)
One month ago, it was reported that Gwynne Shotwell was assuming oversight of the Starship program at Starbase, Boca Chica, Texas. This news seems to have coincided with Elon Musk’s main attention shifting to Twitter.
Written by Niki Whewell & Iain Scott, 9th December 2022